TURNING OVER A NEW LEAF ON RIKERS ISLAND, GARDENING HELPS INMATES THINK ABOUT A DIFFERENT KIND OF LIFE

By JAMES MELANSON

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS|

Apr 12, 1998 | 12:00 AM

Jose, an apprentice gardener, has climbed into the branches of a crab-apple tree and is busy pruning. As he works, he manages an occasional glance beyond the 20-foot-high fence, topped with razor wire, that encloses a nearby greenhouse and the land around it. Jose says he "likes the fresh air," and then explains that he hopes to work toward becoming a pediatrician when he gets out June 30, after serving nine months "for selling.

" The 20-year-old inmate is tending garden in an unlikely place: Rikers Island, a Department of Correction facility that houses thousands of offenders serving sentences of a year or less or waiting to go to trial. These days, along with lavender, avocado and dozens of flowering perennials, seeds of hope are being sown at the island jail. Almost two dozen male and female inmates are taking part separately in the New York Horticultural Society's Greenhouse Project at Rikers. Funded entirely by donations to the society, the project is run in conjunction with other prisoner-rehab programs. "It fits in nicely," says Roger Jefferies, acting deputy commissioner for DOC programs. Several landscaping projects in various stages dot the acre-and-a-half plot around the greenhouse. One inmate works on a brick path, while others arrange 10 to 15-pound stones around an unused cement cistern that will be turned into a pond and centerpiece for a circular garden. Bob Vila and Martha Stewart would be proud. Flowering of interest Milagros, who will be going home May 1, says she hopes to enroll in a two-year training program at the New York Botanical Garden. The former clerk/typist and 30-year-old mother of three is serving eight months for insurance fraud. At Rikers, she discovered that she likes working with her hands and developed an affinity for plants "especially cactuses," she says. Jose and Milagros (the inmates asked that their last names not be used) aren't the only ones considering their future while trying to develop a green thumb on Rikers Island. Ronda, 36, says she's interested in pursuing computer work when her sentence for selling drugs is up. Those studies, though, take up time in another class; this morning, she's holding up a plant for visitors to their greenhouse to admire. "I like beautiful things," she says to the plant. Behind her, twentysomething Debra, also sentenced for selling drugs, is filling small plastic containers with potting soil. It's her first day at the greenhouse, and she's excited about being there. "It sounds like fun," she says, a trace of newcomer's nervousness in her voice. Another inmate explains that she likes the discipline of working in the greenhouse. She doesn't want to be identified at all because her grown children don't know she's serving seven months on a drug conviction. Juan, 27, goes from one group to another, wielding a pick, pushing a wheelbarrow, stopping to say he thinks landscaping could be a "profitable way of making money.

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" All the while, two correction officers move among the inmates and talk to them with a mixture of authority and genuine interest in what they're doing. Preparing the soil According to NYHS president Anthony Smith, the Rikers initiative wasn't begun "with the absolute hope or intention that anyone going through this greenhouse program should end up in the world of horticulture when they're released. If that happens, we think that would be terrific. But what we are trying to do is to get them psychologically, intellectually, emotionally job-eager and job-ready.

" Smith also envisions the day when plants and shrubs from the Rikers greenhouse will be used for the society's Branches Program, a separate effort to landscape Carnegie library branches throughout the city. The first landscaping was done last year in the Ocean Hill-Brownsville section of Brooklyn at a cost of $20,000. Since then, the society has raised an additional $230,000 to landscape 11 more branches throughout the city. Meanwhile, the potential synergy between NYHS programs like these excites 38-year-old project director James Jiler, who describes himself as an "urban ecologist.

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" Born in Flushing and reared in New Jersey, Jiler earned a master's degree in forestry at Yale before setting his career course. Having spent seven years in Nepal working on farm programs for the needy and several more in Baltimore and New Haven focusing on urban restoration, he says he's always "looking for the connective tissue between people and the natural resources of their environment.